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How Does the Shaper Origin Stack Up Against a CNC Gantry Router?

We got our hands on the much sought-after Shaper Origin and put it to the test

By Core Jr - November 7, 2018

in Digital Fabrication | DIY | Hand Tools

After much hype and a swarm of pre-orders following CNC router Shaper Origin's introduction to the market in 2016, Shaper's sales team brought their shopping cart to a halt, giving time for them to fulfill pre-orders and produce more units. The Shaper Origin has recently been made available for pre-order again (and will apparently begin shipping January 2019), but we were able to get our hands on one of them prior to the re-launch so we could see for ourselves: how does a Shaper Origin compare to a large CNC gantry?

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Years ago, industrial designer and Core77 contributor Randall Tyner built himself a 4'x4' CNC gantry machine—in a recent video for Core77, Tyner gives a balanced review of pros and cons regarding the Shaper Origin versus his heavy duty CNC. Who is the Shaper Origin best utilized by? What type of projects are best for Origin or best for a traditional CNC?

Check out the video to weigh in on whether a Shaper is a fit in your shop—and if it's calling your name, thankfully you no longer have to wait to pre-order.

Editor's note: Shaper did provide Core77 with this tool for review, however, we asked Randall to review it with an honest, critical eye toward the Origin's ultimate pros and cons (especially comparing it against a larger gantry).

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Alex Bakker

6 years ago

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Oof - those 3D tool paths looked like they had a ton of stutter. need more smoothing/CV setting/Acceleration setting tweak.

One thing I don't see mentioned is dust collection. If you don't have a hard plumbed large dust collector, a gantry CNC can run with effectively 0 dust. The origin won't do that because you don't have a way to run a 6" dust port to it. Since routers, especially hand routers create a huge amount of fine dust, you either need to wear a mask, or work outside.

I'd also say that a frequent problem that people have with gantry machines is that they set them up too low. Mine is built to have a surface of about 42". This means that I can hang pieces off the end of the gantry machine to carve the ends, and alignment is less of an issue.

I like the shaper origin in concept, but in practice, I find that pocket clearing is one of my most common tasks, and a gantry machine will do that better/faster every time. OTOH, being able to work on pieces that are already built or that cannot fit on the bed seem like killer features that even a production shop could use.

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- Alex Bakker
  
  Alex Bakker
  
  6 years ago
  
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  Self reply: I meant that if you DO have a hard line dust collection system, CNC will make no dust. If you are relying on small dust extractors, it'll always be pretty bad.
  
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Ken K

6 years ago

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Bobtato ~ I have one from the original offering. It lives up to its hype. It does not disappoint. It is one of the best designed and most satisfying devices I've ever owned. Here are some answers to your questions.
• The precision is superb. Far better than the .01 they advertise, reliably closer to .001 for me — which for woodworking is insane overkill but delightful.
• One of the most gloriously satisfying things is being able to interrupt a cut, move the machine out of the way, check progress, and then drop the machine back in place with perfect alignment to previous cuts. I mean perfect. Like, not being able to feel even the slightest difference in the wall, not even the tiniest sub-fingernail bump, which to me signifies better-than-.001 repeatability. (On a big milling machine, my fingers can feel a .001 difference.) To be able to do that using a handheld router "freehand" is just mind-blowing.
• The precision is dependent on the tape. The tape is nice. It's precisely printed, easily tearable, has just enough stickum to stay put on raw wood but is easily removed. It's highly custom, well thought through. In my opinion, worth it.
• Narrow stock: The tape has to cover a moderately good sized field of view for the machines camera to be able to continuously register its location. For narrow stock — I use a lot of under-1x1" stock — you need to put tape well outside the stock. Solution: Some larger MDF or plywood boards (jigs) with the special tape on them, with slots cut in them to hold my narrow workpieces. I use the bigger jig boards over and over without replacing the tape, or just replacing the worn bits of tape and "rescanning" the board.
• Note that the field of tape and the bottom surface of the Shaper Origin need to be coplanar for maximum machine-vision precision. Which of course means that the top face of your workpiece should be coplanar with (or lower than) the top surface of the jig board. This is one of the tradeoffs from not using a gantry CNC machine.
• Dust extraction is excellent. I improved the already excellent dust extraction a wee bit by taping over one air intake slot in the see-through guard where tiny chips seemed to leak out.

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Bobtato Smith

6 years ago

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I've been super interested in this for a long time. I love the idea, I'd have a ton of uses for it, and I absolutely don't have the space for any other large-scale CNC machine for recreational use. And I use CNC all the time so I don't care whether it's really as beginner-friendly as claimed.

But I still have doubts and questions. I'm a little skeptical about the precision; I don't love that you're dependent on the special fiducial tape; it seems like it might be a PITA to set up and use with small or narrow stock (I use a lot of 2x2s); and although it's cheap for a CNC router, it's not cheap enough to take a "try it and see" approach. I plan to try to persuade someone else to get one first.

Something they don't express very well is that the manual aspect is not only not a negative, it's a selling point compared to (especially sub-$10k) gantry machines. You won't have to worry about the stock coming loose, or the spindle trying to force its way through a screw or clamp, or realising that the machine lost its zero 30 minutes ago and has now ruined a whole 4'x8' workpiece. And the dust extraction on this thing might actually work. And you don't need to think about feeds and speeds (which is a headache even with wood). The lack of 3D milling isn't great, but then again, it's prohibitively painful and time-consuming to do that on a cheap gantry setup.

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